“Exactly,” said Vanderdecker. “There I was in this pub, having a quiet drink, when this tall man with a moustache asks me if he can hitch a lift as far as France. No problem. Cromwell didn’t think so, but I didn’t know that, of course. Dunkirk, there’s another instance of exactly the same thing. If those German cruisers hadn’t come downwind of me at exactly that moment, just as all those little boats were zooming across the Channel with no escort whatsoever…You see the point I’m trying to make. I keep having these drastic effects on history. I don’t try to. I don’t even want to. I hate myself for it afterwards, but it keeps happening. You asked me if I thought I had a special destiny. I know I don’t, it’s just coincidence. Not coincidence, even; pure, calculable probability. If one man stays around long enough, just by his being there, important things are bound to happen to him or because of him sooner or later. Now there’s nothing I can do to stop it, but I’m damned if I’m going to do it on purpose. It was bad enough that time with Napoleon…”
“Napoleon?” Jane asked.
Vanderdecker scowled at her. “Who do you think was the idiot who picked up a passenger on Elba in 1815?” he said. “I met this man in a pub. “Where are you headed for?” he asks. “France,” I tell him. “What a coincidence,” he says, “so am I.” Why is it, by the way, that they always want to go to bloody France? I tell a lie, though; Garibaldi wanted to go to Italy. Anyway, I’ve got to face the fact that history to me is little more than a horrible reminder of my own interference. Even now, I can’t listen to the Skye Boat Song without cringing.”
Jane’s eyebrows may have twitched up an extra quarter inch, but she said nothing. It was a good throwaway line, and she didn’t want to know the details.
“You should write your autobiography,” she suggested.
“I did, once,” Vanderdecker said. “It was very boring, very boring indeed. Lots of descriptions of sea-travel, with comments on licensed victualling through the ages. The hell with it. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can help you.”
“Oh well,” said Jane. “It was nice meeting you, anyway.”
“So what are you going to do?” Vanderdecker said.
“Do?” Jane frowned. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“To me,” said Vanderdecker, “yes. I mean, you aren’t the sort of person who bears grudges, are you? I mean, you know a lot about me now; what I do, where I get my boat fixed, all that.”
“I see what you mean,” Jane said. “No, you needn’t worry on that score.”
“I believe you,” Vanderdecker said. “And what are you going to do?”
“Good question,” Jane said. “You see, I don’t exactly relish the prospect of telling my boss that I didn’t manage it after all.”
Vanderdecker thought for a minute. “Am I right in thinking,” he said slowly, “that you said you have no sense of smell?”
“Rotten sense of smell, at any rate,” Jane said.
“Well, then,” said the Flying Dutchman, “would you like a lift anywhere?”
“Anywhere, where?”
“Anywhere,” Vanderdecker replied. “I can assure you that my ship is entirely free of etchings.”
“Etchings?” Jane asked and then said, “Oh I see,” quickly and reflected that it was one way of putting it. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, you said yourself, it’s quite boring being at sea for seven years at a time.”
Vanderdecker smiled. “Ah yes,” he said, “but is it as boring as being an accountant?”
Jane thought hard. “Nothing,” she said, “could possibly be as boring as being an accountant. What was he like?”
“Who?”
“Bonnie Prince Charlie,” Jane said.
“Oh, him,” Vanderdecker replied. “Just like all the others, really.”
He stood up and went to the bar for another drink, just as the barman put the towels over the pump handles.
♦
Not for the first time, Danny was stuck for the right word. As a result, he was feeling frustrated, and he gripped the telephone receiver so tightly that it creaked slightly.
“You’ve got to look at it,” he repeated, “
“Take the
“You do realise I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about?”
The slender umbilical cord connecting Danny to his self-control snapped. “What I’m talking about,” he said, “is the biggest story since Westlands. And you’re prepared to jeopardise it for the sake of the cost of hiring a boat.”
“What was Westlands?”
Danny made a noise at the back of his throat not unlike an Irish linen sheet being torn into thin strips. “Don’t play silly buggers with me,” he said. “God, what a way to run a television network! Don’t you understand, all I want to do is hire a bloody boat and go and shoot some pictures.”
“I understand that, yes. What I don’t understand is why. That’s where our communications interface appears to have broken down.”
“But don’t you…” Danny paused for a moment, and an idea sprouted in his mind like the first pure, simple snow-drop of spring. “Stuff you, then,” he said.
“Sorry?”
